Tuesday, June 25, 2013

Brandon League has pictures of Don Mattingly and the phone number for TMZ. That's the only way I can justify why Don would insert Brandon League in a ninth-inning save situation, Dodgers up 6-3, on the verge of winning our fourth game in a row for the first time this season. Why not laugh right in the faces of the baseball gods? Why use logic to guide reliever selection? Why the fuck would we put in Brandon League?

League surrenders (and I use that lightly; more like rolls-over-and-plays-dead) a Hunter Pence single, a Brandon Belt RBI double, and an Andres Torres RBI single. 6-5. Mattingly finally goes to Paco Rodriguez.

And Rodriguez saves Mattingly's bacon, yielding a Brandon Crawford single but getting the next three batters out, including a deep fly ball from Marco Scutaro to center field, which Matt Kemp tracked down on the track with his back to the plate. Dodgers win. Barely.

Stephen Fife did great: 6.2 IP, 4 H, 3 ER, 2 BB and 3 Ks. Fife yielded solo HR to Oyster Pubes and Belt. But Fife got four runs of support from two two-run shots (Mark Ellis and Hanley Ramirez, the latter of which hit the left foul pole), as well as a RBI single from Tim Federowicz and a throwing error from Giants reliever Jake Dunning which scored Nick Punto from third. The Dodgers vault to seven games back of Arizona.

And if Donnie can keep League off the mound, we may even have a shot at continuing this winning streak!

Why was he in the 9th? After the first two batters why was he still in? Is there any doubt he losses the game if he would have stayed in. He isn't even worthy of mop up work and any faith I had in Donnie being able to think outside his preconditioned baseball players' manager bs is gone.